128 
“So far as we can learn,” he adds, “ no savage tribe does 
appear, in point of fact, to have ever civilised themselves.” 
Every alleged case breaks down on inquiry.  Catlin’s 
Mandans were never savages, but probably survivors of the 
Pueblo Indians, who appear once to have inhabited a far 
wider area. 
The Cherokees, who have invented a native alphabet, have 
been long in contact with Huropeans. The Hawaiians and 
Maoris have been long under the influence of missionaries, 
and so have the Fuegians, whom they have turned from brute 
beasts into men once more. 
Mr. Herman Merivale, late Professor of History at Oxford, 
says, in his work on Colonisation and the Colonies, p. 294: 
“lwo important lessons may, I think, be drawn from the 
history of the Spanish missions, and especially those of 
Paraguay. ‘The first is this: that history has no example to 
offer us of any successful attempt, however slight, to mtroduce 
civilisation amongst savage tribes in colonies, or in their 
vicinity, except through the agency of religious missionaries.” 
And yet even this tendency to degradation has limits, as is 
pointed out in Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern 
Africa, by Charles New (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 
1878), where he says, pp. 94, 95 :— 
“We talk of races degenerating, and races have degenerated and do 
degenerate fearfully, but there would seem to be a point below which human 
nature cannot sink. Admitting the possibility of unlimited degeneration, 
the wonder is that the Wanika, and the peoples of similar character, have 
not become downright idiots. Yet, they are further removed from idiocy 
than from a high intellectuality. The great Creator would seem to have 
placed an impassable barrier to utter degeneracy ; but, on the other hand, 
there is no such barrier in the way of improvement. Is it not astonishing 
that ages upon ages of neglect, abuse, stagnation, and depravity should not 
have crushed the man altogether out of these people? Yet so it is, men 
cannot become brutes, do what they will; they remain men in spite of every 
degrading influence and however long such influences may continue to 
operate. The Wanika are a most demoralised and uncultivated people ; 
letters, science, art, philosophy, and religion are altogether unknown to 
them, yet they possess all the elements of a mental and moral constitution 
similarto ourselves. Inall that regards the affairs of every-day life they ’ 
are as keen and sharp-witted as the more cultivated, and can hold their own 
against all comers. 
“The precocity of the children is very remarkable. They learn with 
wonderful ease and quickness, at least equal to, if not surpassing, that dis- 
played by European children. It must be admitted, however, of the un- 
educated child that as he grows up he becomes much duller, and that by the 
time he gains maturity his mind settles down into the normal condition of 
inertness and obtuseness. But we are disposed to think that this would be 
the case with all people more or less. The mind requires to be educated 
while it possesses elasticity ; im maturity it becomes hard, rigid, and un- 
yielding.” 
